Hydrogen passivation of gold centers in silicon

We report investigations of passivation of the gold center in silicon after hydrogen injection by wet chemical etching. Using deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) and capacitance-voltage (CV) profiling we find two separate hydrogen-gold complexes. One of the complexes named G is electrically active and has most likely three deep levels in the band gap. The other hydrogen-gold complex PA is electrically inactive (passive). Based on the annealing kinetics of these complexes we suggest that the G complex is a AuH pair and the passive complex is AuH2.